WHO Principles and Tools to Improve Use and Impact of WHO Guidelines

To promote informed decision-making and to achieve the best possible health outcomes for citizens globally, the WHO publishes guidelines to support all levels of healthcare based on scientific evidence. Despite a high level of trust in WHO guidelines, their uptake and implementation within countries remains low. Research highlights that guidelines 'must be receptive to the needs of users' (The Lancet), yet, as currently developed, they are often too long and technically complex for easy uptake and implementation. Further, there is little visual consistency across WHO Guidelines and many are published as lengthy PDF documents, limiting access in some settings.

Launched in December 2024, the WHO Principles and Tools is a guide that supports the design of WHO guidelines globally. Developed through a co-design process engaging stakeholders from 15 countries — including ministries of health and transport, healthcare leaders, and WHO country offices — the toolkit addresses a critical gap between how WHO products are produced and the people that use them. The principles support the WHO to embed end-user needs in guideline development, while the tools provide tangible design methods for empathising with users, designing for accessibility, clarity, translation and a global movement to ‘living’ content, powered by AI.

The WHO Principles and Tools contribute to transforming how global guidance is conceived, developed and implemented, making it user-centered and impact-oriented in ways never institutionalised at this scale before. By embedding design methods early in guideline development, the tools help WHO create products that are responsive to country needs, enabling greater implementation, usability, and measurable health impact. The resource is available to guideline developers in all WHO Member States (194 countries, 6 regions), supporting evidence-based care of billions of people worldwide, particularly in low resource settings. Already in use across multiple programmes, the resource enhances organisational workflows while reducing inefficiencies.

- Public link: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/design-principles-and-tools-to-improve-use-and-impact-of-who-guidelines - WHO reports: https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/365229 https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/372409 - Article: https://lens.monash.edu/2024/12/12/1387239/global-collaboration-with-the-world-health-organisation-to-improve-guideline-impact - WHO publishes evidence-based guidelines to promote informed decision-making, including for malaria, rheumatic fever and influenza. Guidelines are used by healthcare leaders to drive policy changes. Understanding the motivations of end-users is critical to successful implementation of a guideline. - To understand the usability of guidelines in different countries, the WHO Science Division consulted with more than 70 end-users, including policy advisors, advocacy groups, patient representatives, and design experts, revealing that while WHO guidelines are trusted documents, there are multiple barriers to their implementation and uptake. - One major barrier identified in the co-design process is the limited consideration of context in which guidelines will be used when determining the approach to design, dissemination, verbal and visual language, and content. - Over 2.5 years four global co-design consultations brought participants from 15 countries, including from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. - The co-design process for the WHO principles and tools has been published in two WHO reports, supporting others across the global organisation to use design processes. - Design tools were co-designed with member states to ensure they represented the experiences of guideline users and guideline developers.